


Glimpse

by Zoya113



Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: Apotheosised black friday, F/M, wigglified tgwdlm?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29375697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: Both in two separate realities, Hannah Foster and Paul Matthews are both given glimpses into the horror of what their alternate reality selves might be facing
Relationships: Emma Perkins/ Paul Matthews, Lex Foster/ Ethan Green
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Glimpse

**Author's Note:**

> Quick tw for emergency broadcasts !

Paul didn’t always sleep well, if he slept at all.

He wasn’t really an insomniac, but he often found himself staying up into the early hours of the night, his brain never quite ready to go to sleep even when he knew he had to be up in a couple of hours.

He found just laying there, staring at the clock and waiting to fall asleep an unbearable, mind draining torture, even if that was exaggerating. 

He was always tired but there was nothing coffee couldn’t fix, fortunately. 

Paul wasn’t a dreamer, either. He knew technically everyone dreamt whether they remembered it or not, but he supposed he fell into the latter. Most dreams were flashes of unusual images, snippets of conversations he couldn’t ever recall and faces he couldn’t quite recognise anyways.

In fact, most nights when he slept he found himself in a void. A sort of black and white and the same time, as equally dark as it was light, a colour that didn’t exist in the waking world that his memory dumped seconds upon waking up. 

Emma said she didn’t dream like that, that when she dreamt it was usually nightmares, she’d always wake up in the middle of the night but Paul would always still be up to comfort her off to sleep. It was so regular that this sort of event was what he usually took as a sign to put his phone down and head off to sleep with her cradled in his arms. She said she had all sorts of nightmares, about her family, losing Jane, getting lost while backpacking or staying at shady hostels full of scary people. 

Paul didn’t have nightmares like that, they were more like visions that left him with uneasy feelings like eyes watching him, or conversations he couldn’t quite understand but left him feeling uneasy. Nightmares for him were nothing more than a bad gut feeling that washed away with his morning coffee.

Tonight, though, feeling oddly tired, he decided to go to sleep at the same time as Emma (admittedly, this didn’t save him too many hours extra sleep, she wasn’t the earliest sleeper either), and falling asleep didn’t trouble him.

It was like closing his eyes, no desire to toss or turn or fidget with his hands as he waited to fall asleep, he was just out cold.

Although much to his surprise he did seem to awaken in the dreamworld tonight. 

It was vivid,he could feel the couch he was sitting on, and read the text on the TV as a happy little jingle sung along - proper lyrics and everything, Paul was in half the state of mind to applaud his very clever brain for coming up with a song that rhymed, but part of him knew he’d wake up in the morning and realise it was all just blabber.   
He didn’t like musical jingles though, and this one was too cheery for his own enjoyment.

He turned away, finding it rather easy to move in this dream, swivelling his head to the left to see Emma sitting across from him, biting on her lip and tugging at her hair ever so slightly, he was about to ask her what was wrong when he noticed a third presence, that of a small boy in between them with a total lack of interest in the commercial. It was Tim.

Oh, he leant back in his seat, sinking into the couch. 

It was sort of nice, the atmosphere was a bit dreamy of course, he couldn’t quite make out the rest of Tom’s apartment, past the couch and the TV set, it was all shrouded in darkness because he couldn’t remember what it looked like. 

There was an uneasy feeling in his stomach, especially after looking at the way Emma was pulling at her hair, just curling it around her finger a little too hard, nothing noticeable, and definitely not something Tim would pick up on. But she was stressed.

“This is one of those toy commercials,” Paul sighed without really thinking it, like he wasn’t actually in control of his body as he reached out for the remote to turn the volume down. “Wiggly is a scam,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes, “that thing is so ugly.”

Tim laughed. “He’s like a little alien.”

Emma wasn’t laughing, she was bouncing her leg, her gaze burning holes into the coffee table. 

Then the jingle paused, the volume muting but the video still playing, sort of like that moment right before an incoming phone call, and the ad was interrupted by a bulletin, the screen changing to a neon blue as the attention siren sounds began to play, whooping at an increased volume as compared to the ad.

Paul’s throat dried up at the sound, lunging forward in his seat, hand on the armrest ready to stand up for whatever he was called for, whether that be to lock the doors or grab the car keys, why was it taking so long to get to the message?

“Ballistic missile threat inbound to Michigan,” it read out in its monotonous, robot voice, and Paul’s heart dropped, whipping around to Emma to ensure he had heard that right, but she was still staring at the screen. 

In a nightmare like this, he would’ve figured Emma or Tim wouldn’t cooperate, they wouldn’t move with him, or that he’d freak himself out of the nightmare and find the news broadcast reading something different, less scary, ‘heavy rain may lead to flooding,’ that sort of stuff, but it was all too real, Emma started racing about, snatching up the keys, calling out orders, “Paul, grab Tim, we have to leave.”

“Seek immediate shelter if evacuation is not possible,” it continued.

“Paul, now!” Emma snapped, but he was frozen to the spot.

“What? What’s happening?”

“This is not a drill.”

He was willing his mind to dream up something else, stop the chaos, wake him up, but it was like he didn’t have a choice to leave. 

“Emma? What does that mean? Where’s dad? Are we gonna be okay?”

“Come on Paul, come on!” Emma grabbed his wrist and yanked him out of his trance, rushing past him into the kitchen to grab her things off the counter.

He didn’t have time to ask questions, the dream would surely sort that out, he just picked Tim up, putting him on his back and storming across to the door, swinging it open for Emma to get through.

“Come on, come on!” She kept calling like it was all she could say. “Come on, come on!” Even when he was almost walking on her heels.

She unlocked the car, and he pulled Tim into the front seat with him.

“Why are we leaving? I don’t have my stuff!”

“Tim, your stuff isn’t important right now okay!? Just, we’re going!” Emma fumbled with the keys in the ignition, “fuck!” She cursed right in front of the child before getting the keys in, stomping on the gas.

“Emma! Emma!” Tim cried. “We can’t leave without dad!”

“Your dad has his car- He’ll get out okay?”

“We can’t go without dad!”

Paul couldn’t say anything, he was shocked at the realism - how his heart was beating, how each individual building racing past was one he recognised, screaming and crying people just out on the street, he didn’t get why his brain was tormenting him, he was definitely asleep, wasn’t he? He had gone to bed, Emma right by his side, then why was this so real? 

He could literally hear Emma panting next to him, slamming between the breaks and the gas, spitting curses at the messy traffic swerving across the roads, dashing past stop lights, 

“Emma! Emma we can’t go without dad!” He could feel the quivering of Tim’s chest with his shaky breaths, and he pulled him in to stop the child scratching at Emma’s hands to make her turn the wheel. “We can’t go without dad!”

Paul didn’t know what role in this nightmare he played, whether he should turn to get Tom, whether they should just drive, whose side he was on - he didn’t even know his own opinion, his mind had gone blank with terror, and with an airy whine from Emma she swerved, cutting across the road at breakneck speed in the direction of Lakeside mall.

Up in the air dark smoke was rising in pillars, and Paul could even smell it in the air.

Surely this was a dream from the way Emma was driving, Emma was a careful driver, especially after what had happened to Jane, but now he was pressed back in his chair as the car throttled over the curb into the opposite lane to cut through into the Lakeside Mall parking lot.

“The whole this is on fucking fire!”

Paul didn’t know why, doomsday looters, maybe. 

He didn’t know why there were missiles dropping, he had missed that part. WIth one hand still tight around Tim he reached his hand into his back pocket, pulling out his iPhone.

The US had nuked Moscow.

The whole fucking thing was gone, decimated, literally blown off the map - it was a crater. And that was all there was, it was hard to get information on it when it was happening right now.

His phone was getting flooded with the notifications too, ‘domestic missile threat inbound to michigan,’ it said, refusing to leave the top of his screen, Tim was still writhing in Paul’s arms for his dad, crying, screaming, and Emma couldn’t spare him even a second as she tried not to crash the car and kill them all, her eyes laser focused on not burning up the car in the fire spitting down from the top of the mall, the smoke wasn’t making it any easier to drive, and the heat wasn’t making it any easier to stay calm as he tried to crane his neck around Tim to see out the window.

‘Tom, Tom! Oh my god!” She pulled the car to a halt. “Paul! Come on!” 

“Tom-Tim! Stay here!” Paul ordered, not wanting to bring the child out into the flames. “Stay right here don’t move! We’ll come right back for you with your dad!” He had to close the door on Tim, pushing him back in before chasing after Emma, focussing on nothing but her so he didn’t lose her in the smoke, barely sparing a thought to the searing fire spitting out overhead.

Sweat stuck his sweater to his back, lashing down on his skin, but the rest of him was cold with fear.

Tom was standing with people, exhausted and content, seemingly unaware of everything else going down, Paul didn’t recognise the people clustered around him with the exception of Becky Barnes, he knew Becky Barnes.

“Somebody nuked Moscow!” He stammered, unable to keep that fact to himself. Why didn’t they seem to care? “The news was saying it might be world war three! Until the news went out!” 

“You know, I have this kooky reclusive biology professor, he lives on the edge of town, his whole house is like a panic room, we could go there,” Emma was telling them all, Paul’s mind was flicking in and out of focus, he wanted to shut down, freeze and curl up right here until things weren’t so overwhelming but that wasn’t how it was going to work.

They had to get back to the car, they had left Tim in the car, except now they had to cram four more people in, and Paul could hardly breath as it was!

They all clambered back down the stairs, racing to avoid the searing heat, what was left of Lakeside mall’s customers pouring out alongside them in a strange sort of sync that reminded him he was dreaming, and that’s when something rocketed overhead, a trail of smoke streaking across the black sky, hurtling down on top of them and-

He woke up with a start, fighting for breath as fresh air struggled to make it past his tight throat to his lungs, kicking the blanket off that was strangling his legs, falling off the side just to feel something solid and cool underneath him.

“Paul?” Emma wasn’t asleep yet, and she raised her head to glance over the side at him. “Hey, Paul, babe? Are you okay?” She pushed the blankets aside a little more urgently, taking his arm to sit him back up.

Her hands were cool, not sweaty or clammy, and he could smell her shampoo interlaced with the tired smell of their bedsheets that clung to the both of them, not fire or smoke, his ears were ringing but at the same time it was so quiet compared to the everpresent screaming in his dreams.

“I saw something bad,” he choked out, “where’s your phone? What does your phone say?”

Confused but only wanting to help, she picked it up off her pillow where she had left it. “3:32am,” she answered, showing him.

No emergency message, but it was still hard to believe, surely it was bound to be incoming, he wanted to leave now, before the traffic got bad, before the fires started. “Turn- Turn on the TV,” he spluttered, hauling his exhausted and shaky body to its feet, hurrying out into the main room and flicking the lights on to find the remote.

“Mph,” Emma shielded her eyes at the light as she followed after him. “Paul, Paul, sit down, you just had a bad dream, what’s up?” She went to the fridge as he sat in front of the TV, waiting for the sirens to start.

“It- it wasn’t a dream Em-Emma, it couldn’t have been, it was so real, I could feel it all, I can still see it in my head, like, everything, what they said on the news, it was all real Emma!” He could feel the scratchy texture of the sweater he had worn and he could remember the smell of the smoke burning his nostrils and the heat in his mouth, the way the sweat on his hands prevented him from opening the car door the first time, and the weight on his lap shifting as Tim squirmed and cried, the cries were so real, the cries and the screams, the looks of horror, seared so perfectly into his mind.

But the TV was playing that late night jazz music, the sort of ‘everyone else is asleep, what are you doing up?’ channel filler, no news to report at all. 

Emma flicked on the coffee machine, clearing her throat. “It’ll go away in a second, babe. What happened?” She pulled out his favourite mug.

He shook his head, he didn’t need to torment himself any further by remembering the fear on Emma’s face, and he knew how she would handle it, she’d laugh and scoff and awkwardly glance away, maybe give him a pat on the back, but he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by describing in depth her suffering in his head. “I just, it was a bad dream.”

“Ahh,” Emma nodded. “I know man, I get those.”

He nodded too, but if this is what normal nightmares were like he never wanted to sleep again, he could still feel the grainy wooden texture of the Lakeside Mall’s balustrade on his palms. 

“You’ll be alright. If you go to sleep, you’ll hardly be able to remember it by the morning,” she came to sit besides him, hand on his back, handing him his cup of coffee with a sympathetic smile as he flopped his head onto her shoulder, his other hand hanging onto her for dear life. 

But he took his coffee, and washed the bad dream away with its familiar taste. 

Never anything coffee couldn’t fix he had to tell himself, although he wasn’t going back to sleep.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey Han,” Lex was digging through the rucksack where she had haphazardly packed her clothes into before leaving their mother last night. “What do you wanna wear today?” She asked, oddly frantic in the way she searched.   
Hannah just sat at the foot of her mattress, the one she usually slept on when they stayed at Ethan’s, chewing on her sleeve. 

“Banana, I’ve gotta go to work. I have to leave you with Ethan, can you come find a shirt?” she asked again.

Hannah nodded her head up and down to say she would choose. She would pick one herself, later, when she usually got dressed. Ethan was still home, he was out in the garage with his dad, they weren’t going anywhere yet so there was no need to pick now she didn’t think.

“What about this blue one?” She offered, pulling it out, scrunched up in her hand.

Hannah jolted back on instinct at that, she didn’t mind blue, but something about that pulled a string in her head, and she could feel Webby’s sudden distress.

“Um, Webby doesn’t want the blue,” she answered.

“Oh come on Banana, I can’t do this right now, I’ve gotta go, can you just take this?”

She leaned back from it as Lex thrust it forward, shaking her head, “Not blue.”

“Well Hannah can you just pick one? I forgot by backpack so I have to take this bag to work okay? I can’t be late,” frantically, she stuffed it back in, pulling out a grey shirt instead. “Is this good? Does Webby mind this?”

She nodded to say yes, tucking her head in shyly.

“What’s going on in here?” Ethan burst into the room like he was a security guard attempting to catch someone stealing. 

Lex gave a surprised gasp but Hannah flung herself back onto her mattress with a silent cry, 

“Is there trouble, Banana?” He asked, kneeling down with a hand to his chin, his eyes flicking around like he was on the lookout, but Hannah just scrambled away from him as Webby filled up her mind with unease.

“Huh?” Ethan tilted his head, his jaw dropping slightly as he pulled back in surprise. “Did I say something?”

“Give her some space- sorry, it's a Webby day. You know what I mean.”

“Oh, sorry,” he apologised, more confused than sincere. “I musta scared her by bursting in, thought it’d be funny.”

Hannah shook her head, standing up and stepping off the mattress with her back to the wall.

The both of them turned in sync to look at her and for a split second things were blue - their eyes, their hands, their false-smiling teeth, Ethan had a hole in his skull, his brain was blue too, even if the skin around his head and his eyes and ear were bruised so purple they were almost black.

But just like that they were normal again, heads tilted, exchanging confused looks.

“No, no, no, bad, bad, bad,” Hannah repeated, scanning them up and down to judge whether or not they were safe from the pictures in her head, but she didn’t want to give them time to chase her if they were evil, and she bolted past them bare foot out into Ethan’s hall, disorientated as she tried to remember which way the door was.

“Hey, Hannah, you alright?” Tony, Ethan’s dad, the tall man stepped out in front of her from the garage door, blocking the way to the house’s front door. “What’s wrong? You seem like you’ve had a fright.” He knelt down, tire iron still in hand, and with another blinding flash everything was glowing blue again, there was blood on his tire iron, the car grease on his hands was blue instead too, and the eyes were so vividly bright blue that she couldn’t seem to think., but once more the vision ended faster than it had come on.

“No!” She dodged past him, not the side with the tire iron, she couldn’t let him catch her, she yanked open the front door and pushed her way out onto the street, still in her pyjamas, searching wildly for somewhere to hide, but as she glanced left to right, there was that flash again, and the sky darkened overhead, the cars on the street stilling, smoking as they crashed and piled up on one another, blue eyed hosts climbing the wreckage to the poor man slumped over his dashboard, blood still red, the other blue eyes on the street were staring right at her.

It had lasted longer this time, only ending as the front door swung open again, Ethan and Lex running out front in chase of her.

Why were they chasing her!? She backed up, swerving past the only other man on the sidewalk, the one who had been looking at her with those glowing blue eyes, pelting down the street.

“Hannah!” They both called out.

“What the hell is she doing?” Lex’s question was almost a pained wince, confused and hurt, not sure what to do. “I can’t be late or he’ll fire me!” 

“I’ll handle it Lex, you get going, promise babe,” she heard Ethan’s voice right before she turned the corner, everywhere she looked, blue eyes, dark skies. And the overwhelmingly loud sound of music: people singing, not chanting or yelling or rioting, singing! And happily too, just as sweet as their smiles, just as sickly saccharine. 

She tucked herself back into the corner of the alley way, pushing aside the garbage cans to hide at the back of the alley and burrowing behind the discarded trash piled up out the back of the auto shop, cans of oil and grease bottles and the little miscellaneous nuts and bolts that dug into her skin and scraped up her bare legs where she was hiding, her breathe hot as she breathed in the disgusting smell of the trash littered about, on any other day she would’ve avoided it for its smell alone but she had to hide, she could hear Lex still out the front of the shop calling her name, and Ethan’s dad too, and she was so focused on the way their voices sounded - almost like singing- that she didn’t notice Ethan coming up behind her and grabbing her arm.

She let out a squeal as he pulled her out from under the packing pallets, and she resisted until it resulted in her dragging across the floor.

“Hannah, hey! Banana, it’s me!” He tried to comfort her, but she slapped his hand off her, trying to run again, but he grabbed her around the waist. “Hannah!”

She grabbed his hand with her nails to throw his grip off her with a frustrated and angry yell, spinning around to face him, but his eyes weren’t glowing anymore, he had his hands held up in defence, showing he meant her no harm.

She caught her breath, but held it in her lungs once more.

“Hey, Han, what’s wrong? What’s gotten into you today?” He asked, knelt down, his voice smooth and understanding again.

She shook her head, unable to describe what she had seen.

“Look, I’m sorry, Lex is just going through something right now and she’s stressed too, and I think you’ve really freaked her out, banana,” he held out a hand to signal he was going to touch her shoulder, and she allowed him to. “Can you come back inside?”

“No, bad man- bad man in there,” she shook her head.

“No, No Hannah, just me and dad, we’ll keep you safe okay? You can stay in my room and I’ll watch the door.”

Hannah retreating into her mind, stretching out her awareness around her head to find Webby.

Webby was silent, but she could feel her exhaustion. She was no longer scared or frustrated, just tired, and seemed to put up no resistance to the idea of going back inside, so Hannah let Ethan take her, clinging to his side the whole way.

“I’m sorry, banana. Did something scare you?”

Hannah couldn’t explain what, so she just shrugged, gulping. As they passed the road again she scanned it up and down feverishly with her eyes, but everything was normal, even inside, Ethan’s dad was fine, his eyes not glowing, his tire iron only covered in oil, and she tucked herself back into bed, sitting up with her back against the wall.

“I’ll leave you to it, okay Han? We’ll be in the garage if you need us, just let me know.”

Everything seemed back to normal, but she still edged away from the blue shirt left on the ground.


End file.
